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My 3-year experiment as a digital nomad
As a full-time software engineer at Kapwing and full-time wanderer, I've learned a few things about how to be a digital nomad.
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 530 posts.
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Is it better to fail spectacularly?
Three weeks ago I wrote the following draft of a blog post entitled “Is It Better to Fail Spectacularly?”. I am having a lot of doubts. I’ve been training for the Chicago Marathon in earnest since June, but in reality the preparations began a year ago when I was accepted based on my qualifying time from the 2023…
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Programming book authors: put all the code in the book
tl;dr: programming book authors: put all the code in the book! An extreme antipattern for a programming book is “download the author’s idiosyncratic library code from some random URL an…
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Making progress on side projects with content-driven development
It's hard to make progress on side projects sometimes. Getting started is easy when we see the bright future of the project. Then somewhere in the middle, we get stuck in lists of tasks to do, a long way in and still a long way from the finish line.
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Anxious Generation – How Safetyism and Social Media Are Damaging the Kids
A review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, exploring how social media and overprotective parenting affect children’s mental health.
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My Visit to Deep Springs College (2009)
You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature. For this reason, always be careful about the people and organizations in whom you place your trust.
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You are what you love
Discussing the importance of working alongside your emotions and not against them
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$450 for a School Bag?
Every year, around March, a curious social custom occurs in Japanese families. Parents of kids entering elementary school visit the grandparents and gingerly tread the topic of buying the kids a very expensive item: a randoseru. And gingerly they must tread. The randoseru, a Japanese school bag, costs a whopping
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Functional Programming Self-Affirmations
Dmitrii Kovanikov writes posts about enterprise software development and functional programming, both entertaining and serious. I never used a functional programming language (such as Haskell or OCaml) at work, but several ideas from functional programming have become popular in mainstream general-purpose programming…
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Notes on my Remarkable tablet
Some notes on my note taking device
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Things I learned from teaching (2023)
This spring, I taught an undergraduate class on chess engines. I probably learned more than any of my students.
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I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
I spent some time trying to figure out when to make this announcement in a way that didn’t seem like direct sabotage; the day before the VCF East event seems about right. Years ago, clearing …
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
“Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined.”
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Debugging the Doctor Brain: Who's teaching doctors how to think?
Who's teaching doctors how to think?
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All the remedial classes in one place
A look at the “serious” courses in college today. By Professor Doom I’ve seen plenty of articles bemoaning ridiculous col...
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Spending an afternoon in the Sizewell control-room simulator
I was recently lucky enough to be invited along on a trip to Sizewell Bs operations training centre to see and try their control room simulator.
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How I Backup
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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The secret lives of snowblowers
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than it seems.
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The emotional trial of clinical trials: like online dating with death risk
Part 1 is mostly about what happened as Bess and I raced against tumor growth to find a new clinical trial that might keep me alive. Part 2 is here, and it is mostly about how this process feels an…
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I Added SVG Maps to My Travel Posts
Quick overview of a new blog feature.
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Programmer in Berlin: Culture
This is part 4 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page details cultural differences and things I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on them. Politics One thing about Germany, and Europe in general, is that it’s relatively left-wing when compared to the…
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Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers (2009)
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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Everything I Knew About Stretching Was Wrong
In the past 12 months my body’s mobility and flexibility went from abysmal, a source of persistent pain impacting my quality of life, to pretty darn good. I’m not about to become a stretching influencer, but after a year of researching, trial and error, and hard work I feel back on track and like I... Continue reading…
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The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings
How to maximize 10x work and avoid thoughtless daily 1x work routines
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Replacing Liquid Metal on an Asus Zephyrus G15's CPU
I’ve been using the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 as my daily driver for a few years now. Laptops (gaming laptops especially) pack a lot of heat-generating components in a small and thin space, where the only airflow comes from the small blower fans in the system. In the case of the Zephyrus G15, there’s approximately 120…
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Ideas and Creativity (2019)
Developing ideas is the central aspect of many professions, including—but certainly not limited to—academic research and software development. It is my impression that we often consider ideas, or creativity in general, to be some magical binary property: you either have ideas and are a creative mastermind, or not. The…
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An Open Course on LLMs, Led by Practitioners
A free survey course on LLMs, taught by practitioners.